Taiwan Hits Qualcomm With $774 Million Fine

Qualcomm, which has also been fined by China, South Korea and is being sued by the U.S. Fair Trade Commission for anti-competitive behavior, has said it will appeal decision.

SAN FRANCISCO — Regulators in Taiwan have levied a fine of roughly $774 billion against Qualcomm for anti-competitive behavior, becoming the latest in a string of jurisdictions to find fault with the mobile chip giant's business practices.

Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission (TFTC) detailed the findings of its investigation into Qualcomm in a statement released Wednesday (Oct. 11), saying among other things that Qualcomm's business model harms competition and violates Taiwan's Fair Trade Act. According to a report by the Bloomberg news service, the fine is the largest ever imposed by the TFTC.

Qualcomm said in a statement that it disagrees with the decision and plans to appeal.

"The fine bears no rational relationship to the amount of Qualcomm’s revenues or activities in Taiwan, and Qualcomm will appeal the amount of the fine and the method used to calculate it," the company said.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued Qualcomm, charging the company with using anticompetitive tactics to maintain a monopoly over chips for mobile technologies including CDMA, WCDMA and LTE. The U.S. case is still pending.

At the heart of the TFTC finding — as with those in the other jurisdictions — is a charge that Qualcomm's standards-essential patent (SEP) licensing practices do not conform to fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms required by standards bodies. The TFTC also charged that Qualcomm refuses to sell chips to customers who don't agree to its stringent conditions.

In addition to fines handed down by regulators over the past few years, Qualcomm is currently embroiled in a $1 billion lawsuit with Apple Inc. that began as a licensing fee dispute.

Qualcomm said it intends to seek to stay any required behavioral measures and appeal the decision to the Taiwanese courts after receiving the TFTC’s formal decision, which is expected sometime in the next several weeks.